Old students of Achimota Senior High School have vowed to protect the school asset which is being encroached on by private developers.

The President of Old Achimotan Association (OAA) aka (AKORA), Prof. Ernest Aryeetey,  says they will seek every lawful means possible to regain control of the land. 

The school’s lands were acquired by ordinance by the colonial government from the Osu stool in 1921 and an amount of 4,000 pounds paid to the elders of the stool.

But a protracted land litigation became murkier when the Osu Mankralo stool and a few elders went to court and averred that more than 170 acres of the land were not being used for the purpose for which the colonial government acquired it.

Consequently, the Osu Mankralo stool want it reverted to the original owners.

A legal officer of the Lands Commission said, according to records available at the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources, instead of informing the Attorney-General to enable the government to prepare a solid defence, the School failed to do so.

Rather, he said they went to court to state, among other things, that the state had no evidence to adduce in defence and, therefore, the court could go ahead and make a ruling.

The court then ruled in favour of the Osu Mankralo stool and his team and handed the land back to them.

The elders of Osu Mankralo stool then proceeded to sell the land to some private developers who had begun developing the area in earnest.

But members of OAA are against reverting the school’s land to the Osu Mankralo stool, and the meeting was held to discuss how to retrieve it.

Prof. Aryeetey quizzed, “A public institution has land and private agents go and take the land, then the state cannot do anytime about it?"

“In the interim, we will resort to a public campaign because it is a national issue and every single self-respecting Ghanaian should be concerned,” he stated.

Prof. Aryeetey, therefore, assured fellow OAA’s that the group would do its best to protect the properties of the school to ensure the school’s future was guaranteed.

The Headmistress of Achimota School, Mrs Beatrice Adom, said the school had forwarded its grievances to the court for an injunction to be put on the encroached land.

Mrs Adom has told Joy News in April that the students lived in fear when a fifth dead body was found around the school premises.

However, the assistant headmistress has assured that the situation is under control after officials of the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) took control of the issue.